This course requires no prior knowledge of the topic but students joining this class must have some degree of familiarity with religions or affinity with religious studies. Each student will apply reflections developed through this class to a personal investigation of core issues related to death and dying. Broadening our perception and understanding of death and of the dying process constitutes the main objective of this course. Work done in this class will provide the basis for ethical deliberation and should contribute to understanding death and dying from the constructive perspective of their intertwinement with life.
The strategy adopted in this class is to expand our perception of the topic by examining it from a viewpoint that questions the common Western understanding. Although the approach followed in this class is not limited to one perspective, we will mostly study traditional tools developed in the Asian traditions, Brahmanism and Buddhism in particular. The Tibetan Buddhist tradition provides one of the most extensive set of resources. Instead of making a descriptive survey of all existing approaches to death in the various religious traditions, we will thus focus on holistic approaches to death used in Buddhist communities, essentially in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, examining its relevance for modern day society. In order to center our attention on the dying person we will pay less attention to funerals and other rituals linked with the social significance of death, although this fascinating dimension has generated a significant body of scholarly literature.
Dealing with ethical issues in an engaged manner cannot be entirely value-free, but we will reflect on how to analyze these issues in a scholarly way. We will also consider to what extent the perception of death is culturally determined.